Informatics

The hitchhiking robot hitchBOT at an exhibition in Semptember 2014

0

The story of the destruction of the hitchhiking robot hitchBOT (photo ©Archie) in Philadelphia spread quickly on the Internet. The story was peculiar because the protagonist was a robot but it seemed that its misfortune was the result of a vulgar act of vandalism, especially after a video of its destruction popped up on the Internet. Instead, the analysis of the video proves that it’s a fake so now the story turned into a mistery with two suspects.

0

Google continues its initiatives to fight the problem of patent trolling, which is the use of patents for the sole purpose of restricting competition and to obtain money through lawsuits or through agreements following threats of such actions. Recently the company announced the Google Patent Starter Program, an offer to grant some of its patents to some startups that meet certain requirements. One of the conditions is to join for at least two years to the License on Transfer (LOT) Network, an initiative for the exchange of patents created in 2005.

0

Bradley Horowitz, the Google executive who’s been in charge of Google+ and some newly separate services such as Photos for some months, announced a split between Google+ and YouTube. For a long time it was necessary to create a profile on the social network to gain access to other Google services and this went against many users’ wishes. Eventually, the company decided to change things by eliminating this need with the result that YouTube will be a well-separated service but this news will require a bit of time.